Inter-cohort Trends in Intergenerational Mobility in England and Wales: income, status, and class (InTIME)

• Start date: 01 January 0001
• End date: 01 January 0001

Our goal in this research project is to bring clarity to the debate about recent trends in intergenerational social mobility in the UK by analysing the Office for National Statistics Longitudinal Survey (LS). This contains linked census records for over two million people in Britain between 1971 and 2011. The longitudinal structure of the LS will enable us to track people from childhood to adulthood, comparing the occupations they end up in at different points in their lives, to those of their parents decades earlier. We will use the LS to calculate and compare 'mobility rates' for cohorts of people born between the mid-1950s and the mid-1990s. 

The LS’ very large sample size means that we will be able to draw very fine-grained and robust conclusions about trends in social mobility, not just for the population as a whole but for sub-groups defined by year of birth and type of social origin.  We will calculate mobility rates along three different metrics: occupational status, social class and income, in order to ensure that our findings address the key dimensions of people's social and economic position rather than focusing on only one, as has generally been the case in existing studies.